Live chat on climate

On Wednesday 14 March, the Prime Minister joined Minister for Climate Change James Shaw and a number of representatives for the School Strike 4 Climate group, to talk about what we're doing as a Government, and as a country, to help tackle climate change. This chat was held during lunchtime hours at Wellington College, and livestreamed to an audience of thousands across the country.

The Live Chat for Climate talk was our response to the nationwide movement School Strike for Climate, which took place on Friday 15th. This movement saw school students aged 8-18 from cities and towns across New Zealand boycotting school in a strike for urgent action on climate change.

We take the views of our young people seriously. We want to acknowledge their concerns, and start a genuine and meaningful conversation between our political leaders and the future generation of New Zealand.

That's why we let young people lead the dialogue during our Live Chat event. The talk was hosted by Jesse Richardson, a student from Wellington College, and led by questions posed by School Strike for Climate leaders Sophie Handford and Molly Doyle. The panel also took questions from the live audience, and from the livestream, which saw hundreds of questions submitted.

Like these students, the Government is focused on taking action to address climate change.

We’re committed to provide lasting solutions to the long-term challenges facing New Zealand, including climate change.

The Government has an ambitious goal of being carbon neutral by 2050 and has already started taking action to get there:

We’ve stopped permitting of new offshore oil and gas exploration

We’re planting 1 billion trees

We’re setting up a $100 million green infrastructure fund to back clean energy projects

Climate change is a global problem that transcends our national borders and is why we are also working with international partners to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies.

The PM has said that climate change is her generation’s nuclear free moment and the passion students are showing is reminiscent of that movement, which is a proud part of our national identity.

We want New Zealand to be the best place in the world to be a child and this means delivering a healthy and sustainable place for our kids to live.